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AP Photo\/Al Goldis<\/em><\/p>\n Detroit<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Michigan is accelerating an expensive, green economic transition modeled after California. As the state loses population, auto jobs exit, and utility rates climb, however, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer says the state has an advantage over its coastal peer: It won\u2019t be under water from climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the decades ahead, the effects of climate change will accelerate, and Michigan will be a climate refuge,\u201d she said in laying out her business plan fresh off COVID policies that destroyed 94,500 jobs (the nation\u2019s seventh worst).<\/p>\n The Great Lakes state, she continued, will be a haven for \u201cclimagrant\u201d refugees as they flee submerged western and eastern seaboards.<\/p>\n Whitmer laid out her plan at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island last year \u2013 located in the straits that separate Lake Michigan from Lake Huron \u2013 where cars are banned and the primary transportation is horse and buggy. It is 270 miles \u2013 and a political chasm \u2013 from southeast Michigan\u2019s auto-dependent, population center which is already feeling the effects of the Democratic Party\u2019s climate agenda.<\/p>\n The Policy Conference\u2019s Democratic and corporate elite set a blueprint for a zero-carbon, government-run economy with a focus on surviving in a post-Apocalyptic world allegedly destroyed by. . . the state\u2019s bread-and-butter gas-powered automobiles. With Democrats in charge of every political institution\u2013 governor\u2019s mansion, House, Senate, and Supreme Court \u2013 state leadership has embraced the Democratic Party\u2019s War on Carbon.<\/p>\n Under California and US government regulation, the auto industry\u2019s diverse drivetrain options are being socialized into one: battery-power. Popular gas models have already been eliminated \u2013 Chevy Camaro, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger, Ford Edge, Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator diesel models, and counting \u2013 as companies face billions in fines if they don\u2019t conform with regulatory edicts.<\/p>\n The auto industry has become government\u2019s marionette, dancing for billions in subsidies to pay for EVs that are sitting on dealer lots for over 100 days. Ford is converting its best-selling pickup truck, the F-150, to electric \u2013 introducing a Lightning EV model that debuted last year to media and political applause and projected sales of 150,000 a year.<\/p>\n It sold just 24,000 units as customers pondered a $57,000-$100,00 pickup that can\u2019t tow a boat more than 100 miles. Production has been cut from three shifts to one.<\/p>\n The Detroit-based United Auto Workers, which have reflexively embraced the Party\u2019s EV edicts, is suddenly urging elites to pause. According to the UAW\u2019s own research director, Jennifer Kelly: \u201cengine and transmissions jobs will be eliminated when we make a transition to electric vehicles. Electric, to me, is where the real risk is to our membership.\u201d<\/p>\n The American First Policy Institute study estimated 117,00 job losses due to the forced EV transition with Michigan losing more than any other state (25,000). In Europe, where gas car bans are even more aggressive than in the US, Germany has hemorrhaged auto supplier jobs \u2013 from 310,000 in 2019 to 270,000 today as automakers have shifted to EVs and production has plunged.<\/p>\n \u201cThe move to EVs will require fewer jobs because there are fewer moving parts. It continues the automotive trend towards productivity, it\u2019s not the way for the state to grow jobs,\u201d said economist James Hohman, Director of Fiscal Policy for the Michigan-based Mackinac Center free market think tank. Since 2000, auto employment in Michigan has dropped from 315,000 to 166,850.<\/p>\n At a Metro Detroit campaign rally ahead of the February Michigan Presidential Primary, GOP candidate Donald Trump welcomed retired Ford autoworker Brian Pannebecker, founder of Autoworkers for Trump, on stage at a Metro Detroit rally \u2013 a symbol of rank-and-file workers disgruntled with UAW leadership\u2019s embrace of the Democratic Party agenda.<\/p>\n EVs would also be increasingly expensive to charge as Whitmer & co. have committed to eliminating the fossil-fuel generation by 2040, including southeast Michigan\u2019s largest coal-fired plant which will be decommissioned in 2032. The state\u2019s residential utility costs have already shot up to 21 cents per kW \u2013 not far off California\u2019s notoriously-high 25 cents.<\/p>\n \u201cAll this is being driven by electrification,\u201d said Detroiter and Camaro owner James Martin, 62, who is also an auto industry consultant.<\/p>\n Whitmer\u2019s climagrant speech was cheered by a Mackinac Policy Conference audience of corporate, government, Democratic Party, and media elites. Whitmer\u2019s confidence is understandable \u2013 despite draconian COVID policies, she won re-election in a landslide in 2022, Democratic legislative majorities riding her coattails.<\/p>\n Organized by the Detroit Chamber of Commerce at the tony Grand Hotel, the conference is miles from Detroit\u2019s gutted, inner-city neighborhoods that have struggled under decades of Democratic policies that have fueled family breakdown, the nation\u2019s fifth-highest crime rate, and some of the country\u2019s worst public schools. None of Detroit\u2019s problems were on the Mackinac agenda. Instead, panels focused on climate change, equity, and electric cars.<\/p>\n Democratic elites once showered Detroit with billions from War on Poverty programs \u2013 now they shower rich suburbanites with $7,500 tax breaks to buy EVs.<\/p>\n The effects of Democrats\u2019 War on Carbon are already opening state exits as Ford and GM (fueled by Inflation Reduction Act subsidies) have located battery plants in southern states with cheaper energy costs.<\/p>\n Whitmer allies tout \u2013 not the state\u2019s economic climate \u2013 but its weather.<\/p>\n “Our relative stable weather is going to be a net benefit,\u201d said Quentin Messer Jr., CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., in an interview with The Detroit News. \u201cThere will be parts of the Gulf South that will be uninhabitable, and the insurance rates for home insurance will be exorbitant. And people are going to begin to look to migrate back to the Great Lakes.”<\/p>\n Whitmer recruited Messer to the Chamber from New Orleans where he oversaw Hurricane Katrina cleanup in 2005. \u201cTrust and believe,” Messer said, “that is something that’s going to happen over the next 10-15 years.”<\/p>\n Payne is auto columnist for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AP Photo\/Al Goldis Detroit\u00a0\u2013 Michigan is accelerating an expensive, green economic transition modeled after California. As the state loses population, auto jobs exit, and utility rates climb, however, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer says the state has an advantage over its coastal peer: It won\u2019t be under water from climate change. \u201cIn the decades ahead, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32342,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32341\/revisions\/32342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}